


Contingencies/Contagions

by crashkeys (keycrash)



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Divergent Timelines, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28387467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keycrash/pseuds/crashkeys
Summary: The memory is loose around the edges from half a bottle of champagne, but Akane remembers what Sigma asked her once, on a lonely night in Rhizome-9: "If there are infinite timelines, and only a handful where we succeed, why are we doing this? Aren’t there timelines out there by necessity where we do nothing and still come out on top?""Infinite does not mean all-encompassing," Akane had answered after a moment of thought, swirling around what little liquid remained in her wine glass. "There are infinite numbers between one and two, for example. You could list them until the end of time, and then some, and for any two numbers between one and two, there are infinite numbers between those, and so on.""What’s your point?""Although there are infinite numbers between one and two, none of those numbers are three," she said, a smile playing on her lips. It was like delivering a punchline, the satisfaction, the way the understanding settled into Sigma’s features. "You see? There’s infinite possibility, but the range of timelines can only exist within the realm of what is possible. Some outcomes are impossible," then with a wink and a tip of her glass, "unless action is taken."
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	Contingencies/Contagions

**Author's Note:**

> A little supplemental piece from a year and a half ago for my ZE roleplay plot. It's not perfect, but I'm still fond of parts. I was planning to edit around the information that's only comprehensible in the context of the wider story we've constructed, and make it less clunky in general, but decided to just leave as-is so as to not get trapped in editing purgatory. The only information you really need is that this is about Akane discovering that her apocalypse timeline isn't actually viable for a successful AB Project—and hasn't been for a long time, unbeknownst to her—and deciding how to improvise plans to still find a way to save the world.

The memory is loose around the edges from half a bottle of champagne, but Akane remembers what Sigma asked her once, on a lonely night in Rhizome-9: _If there are infinite timelines, and only a handful where we succeed, why are we doing this? Aren’t there timelines out there by necessity where we do nothing and still come out on top?_

 _Infinite does not mean all-encompassing,_ Akane had answered after a moment of thought, swirling around what little liquid remained in her wine glass. _There are infinite numbers between one and two, for example. You could list them until the end of time, and then some, and for any two numbers between one and two, there are infinite numbers between those, and so on._

_What’s your point?_

_Although there are infinite numbers between one and two, none of those numbers are three,_ she said, a smile playing on her lips. It was like delivering a punchline, the satisfaction, the way the understanding settled into Sigma’s features. _You see? There’s infinite possibility, but the range of timelines can only exist within the realm of what is possible. Some outcomes are impossible,_ then with a wink and a tip of her glass, _unless action is taken._

They’d debated into the night, thoughts only more fluid, theories more inspired with the addition of alcohol. Akane guesses it’s odd that she holds it as a fond memory, but now it runs through her mind like a film reel, flickering amongst other images, other memories, other selves— the times she’s been wrong, misinformed, the times it’s caused catastrophic failure and the times it’s slipped by and the times it’s made everything better than it ever could have seemed.

Akane doesn’t know which of those categories _this time_ falls into quite yet, but she does know one thing: Against all odds, she’s found the three.

She first learns that Aoi Kurashiki’s life and the future of humanity are incompatible in a motel bathroom in New Mexico.

When she tests the shower’s temperature, bare toes tickled by the cool tile, the searing burn of a knob twisted too far is enough for her to jerk back her hand, choke down a startled gasp on hot steam. But the piercing pain doesn’t stop at her hand, doesn’t ebb—instead twists as a knife between ribs, through the fourth intercostal, piercing the heart, and while she doesn’t scream the urge rises in her throat like bile only to be willed down, focused into breathing, breathing. She might wake Aoi. _Should_ wake Aoi if it’s a flashback, breakdown— but to what? Never a knife to the back, she reasons, though her thoughts slip away into the alarm, the fire— always the stomach, an axe to the head—

The cool porcelain of the toilet seat doesn’t relieve the pain, not when she tries to sit, not even when gravity drags Akane stumbling down to the tile floor as she clutches the spot on her dress soaked in wet blood, though her hands come away clean. Even as her vision wavers at the edges, as the wound radiates with a raw painful protest at every movement, she turns to look her assailant in the eye—

—and in moldy three-star motel bathroom walls she (sees nothing, yet) sees the outline of a collared jacket and a knife (albeit shorter, his hair golden, eyes blue— an intruder, though intended), takes a pale wrinkled hand in her own and the year is 2074 and Akane’s blood drips and pools under her, black and pulsing with the slowing beat of her heart, though she is prepared to die.

_By the imminence of death, the weakness in her hands no longer the fault of arthritis, Akane’s mind blooms like a queen of the night, awakens just once to spread its knowledge before its demise. (What she’ll gain in exchange is an echo of being twenty-one and alive for the first time, weightless before the burden is replaced, before Atlas bears the sky again. It’s freeing, that lightness. It’s worth it.) The relief brimming on the horizon aches louder than slice in her heart, her duty almost complete— all that’s left is closing the circle._

_It’s not difficult to concentrate. Akane’s purpose is far greater than this pain, relatively mild in her grand scheme of experience, multitudes of lives and timelines all boiling down to one. Her spectator’s future has already been decided, and though its outcome hangs in the balance its footpaths are ancient. Left’s impatient tapping boot before she’s even quite dead yet signal his apathy, yet even his disruption was carefully pre-planned, a vital occurrence._

To what end?

_Soaked in her own blood (she’d made sure of it) a bracelet clutches her wrist._

_Another bracelet, two more games in which there are no victors; twin tragedies, first to kill ourselves, then our Earth, thirteen reactors collapsing like dominos towards armageddon, judgment day at the hands of the man who’d begun it all. Free the Soul. It_ is _cyclical, even if history repeats in moon landings rather than ships sailing, if their battlefield has changed nature._

Something a bit more concrete.

_Buried in the morphogenetic field are the mechanisms and information by which two espers may divert this path. You must do anything it takes to help them achieve this goal. One year’s worth of preparation if they succeed, a lifetime’s if they fail. The stakes are absolute; this time, six billion lives are on the line._

_The fate of the human race hangs in the balance._

_Minds of parallel Akanes surround her, press in on her as if for comfort as she reaches the event horizon, as her resonant event begins to dissipate into the collective human consciousness. (Perhaps he’s been waiting for her there.) Left curses, tugs at the bracelet not yet loose. Luna has followed orders. Sigma and Phi did not save her life, but every success stands on the backs of hundreds of failures. Everything is according to plan._

_The bracelet unlatches. The timer starts now._

The fire comes and goes, just like that.

Akane shakes on the tile floor, suddenly small, suddenly feeling as if she’s back in her bed with another fever from her last touch with death. Chills run up and down her body with a rigor, the splitting pain travelling instead to her head as her mind opens wider than it ever has before. The influx of information is massive— more than can be quantified by any computer, the essence of a lifetime— a _thousand_ lifetime’s worth of memories compressed into a single imprint, a blueprint, the impression of wisdom on someone so relatively young, naive _(somehow)._ Sheer immensity forces the analysis, the realizations to come in nauseating waves, the kind that make her seasick and feverish and feel as if she’s caught upside down in a gravity well.

But logic can arise even in a system of chaos, given due diligence. Akane Kurashiki comes to these preliminary conclusions with her fingertips hot but her legs cool and wet from the condensation of a running shower:

She will sacrifice her life for humanity, and welcome it with a straight spine and steeled resolve.

Aoi Kurashiki will sacrifice his life for humanity, and never know the difference.

No, that’s not quite right— sacrifice has a connotation of proactivity, of action. Akane would not (could not) offer her brother up on a platter, on a hill, slice his neck open raw and bear it to the sky, no matter how red. Instead she will fade into shadow, cut him loose and ragged to fend for himself, and he will know a tearing sorrow as empty as nine years ago, as pointless. His death will not be a prerequisite, instead an inevitable cost; there is no price Akane cannot pay (even to bring herself closer to that which may destroy her, even if her chest aches and aches with the anticipation of absence) and no limit to what fate is willing to take as collateral.

Aoi Kurashiki is a canary silent in a coal mine— not the catalyst for disaster, but the consequence.

Akane Kurashiki is just as silent as she washes the sweat and salt from her face, folds her sweaters, memorizes the curve of her brother’s nose in the faint midnight light of a full moon through a motel window, and vanishes without a trace.

In the weeks following, life becomes so empty that Akane can hardly make sense of it, of that emptiness, of the utter absence of him in her world. There are no more people who know who she is. For a time she was a real person, a consolidated one whose legs didn’t shake and wrists didn’t burn with her own living ghost, but Akane has always been someone who felt that she had not _lived_ until the day she escaped the shackles of her past. But her own history feels trivial now in the blinding light of imminent apocalypse, the constant countdown in her brain recalibrated from nine years to just one.

Akane’s only solace comes in plans and machinations, and in _fragmentation_ — abandoning her singularity, reaching into disparate parts of her collective mind for names, faces, pawns and allies in her upcoming challenges. The names that resurface quickly become her mantra: _Sigma Klim. Phi Caine._ Two. Never three.

The truth of the matter is that Akane is no longer the only one making sacrifices.

Over the years Akane has known him since their first fateful meeting during a car break-in in California, Sigma Klim has proven to be a man of his word, of ambition and responsibility, and— perhaps most impressively— the planetary record holder in beer pong. (Akane doesn’t know how his mechanical arm, now fine-tuned but still bare metal whirring with every movement, affects his standing, nor the reduced gravity, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.) But in his heart sewn recklessly to his sleeve is a danger; devotion is a game, a risk-benefit analysis that he skips past every time, so when he trips into love with a doomed woman Akane can only wonder whether he’s ignoring the inevitable or the puzzle pieces haven’t fallen into place yet.

(She can understand watering a hopeless, lifeless love, she supposes, twisting the ring on her finger.)

Much like Aoi, Diana’s death is another checkpoint in her forty-five year timeline to tick off. (She’d be lying if she said it felt as gut-wrenching to think of Diana’s lifeless body as Aoi’s, but over the years Diana has still become an ally, a friend, and the project will suffer— but survive— in her absence.) It’s with December’s supply shuttle that Akane leaves, this time for good, though she doesn’t specify as much— she just packs her sweaters again, remembers a motel in New Mexico, and tells Sigma there are duties on Earth to take care of, lives to save. Diana’s felt short of breath for two weeks now, easily fatigued even in one-sixth the gravity, and while Akane didn’t expect her demise to begin this early what she _does_ know is that she can’t have any hand in preventing it.

The relief efforts aren’t a total lie— merely a convenient half truth. With Crash Keys under Akane’s sole management, rather than stock trade and death games they’ve taken to organizing supply shuttles, trade routes, establishing hospital shelters and birthing new technologies to lessen the strain on the healing Earth. It’s never enough, of course, and the ultimate goal is to nurture the AB Project and start anew, but somebody has to secure the prerequisite of Junpei Tenmyouji living to the age of sixty-eight.

But while Akane’s hand in Junpei’s survival until this point is undeniable— without a well-timed letter to Carlos, they’d be dust along with the rest of San Diego— she’s come to realize that Carlos’s role is even more essential than she’d anticipated.

A time after Carlos’s apocalyptic mistake, after Akane had mourned her world enough to reorient her viewpoint, she’d made the decision to become involved in his life again. It wasn’t without thought or without risk— if he were to tell Junpei, even her efforts to fix what atrocities had occurred at Dcom and subsequently the Earth would be compromised. If Carlos were an ounce more honest or an ounce less of a people-pleaser, it could easily become a grave mistake of her own. But through Carlos Akane gained information, gained security about Junpei’s continued survival, and gained a neutral confidant of sorts— and only at the cost of continued efforts to cure his sister, a day’s worth of her time four times a year.

She never expected for Carlos to crumble the very foundation of the structures she’d been building for years.

He tells her of corpses, of funerals and eulogies, and though the words feel foreign to her conceptions of the future it was free of contradiction— but at Aoi, everything changes. At _Aoi,_ Akane hangs onto Carlos’s every word, lets it soak into the ancient ache in her bones and in her soul, clash against the truths in her mind.

As she rummages through the shambles of her shattered futures over the weeks following Akane only wonders how she didn’t realize sooner. The guiding hands of her future selves had accompanied her for months, bringing forth memories she didn’t yet have, direction, some sort of end goal through the trials and tribulations— but since the reactors, white-hot destruction of her planet, they’d quieted, left her to forge her path alone.

It made sense at the time. She’d gotten all the information she needed. The completion of the AB Project was a matter of time, not a matter of logistics. But the more Akane pulls at the fabric of her construction of reality, the more it unravels— and the more it unravels the more she realizes it was a facsimile of _that future_ in the first place, that her departure from success started before her project had even begun.

A photograph lays nestled in desert sand. Aoi Kurashiki is alive. In the chaotic system that is reality, even a minuscule change in starting conditions can create an unrecognizably different outcome; the train derailed long ago, and any attempts to find its tracks are an exercise in futility.

But Akane has never believed in contingency plans. With blueprints of futures laid out before her eyes, she lives three steps ahead, takes all necessary precautions to ensure Plan A _stays_ Plan A; even those failed timelines, dead, rotting, stabbed or axed or burnt aren’t _failures_ as much as they are stepping stones to success. Even the apocalypse, with six billion dead, the Earth scarred and scarlet, was to bear a new timeline on its shoulders. With every possibility accounted for, no history would have to go to waste.

Failing that, she figures the pressure of immediacy is motivation enough to trigger epiphany and seek a way out of any dilemma.

In this case, the looming threat of Diana’s potentially unnecessary death is cause enough to figure out exactly how she’s going to rewrite her future.

Headquarters-with-a-capital-H is an unassuming warehouse in Arizona, rusty and peeling from the outside, the inside only accessible through an inconveniently located number pad. While the Earth has begun to reclaim many of the manmade structures in the vicinity, Headquarters still looks exactly as disheveled as the day she and Aoi first scouted it as a base of operations for Crash Keys— it must’ve been over ten years ago, now. Since then, Crash Keys had spread its reach across the country, relocated to New Mexico, California, Nevada, but it’s here Akane tends to comes back to whenever the AB Project requires a secure location down on Earth. She made sure not to touch it until after the reactor explosions, until the brother she’s hidden herself from no longer had any chance of finding her—but despite his retroactive resurrection it has remained untouched nonetheless, the passcode unchanged. ( _1-4-3-8-3-4-2-1,_ she’d suggested, _so we don’t forget._ He’d ruffled her hair and smirked as if to say _No way you’d forget something like that.)_

What used to be a site for business transactions, communications, housing vehicles, for storage far away enough from Building Q so as to not draw suspicion, is now filled with salvaged equipment from across the country— water filtration systems from abandoned shelters, bays of computers, old generators, specialized scientific equipment meant to be sent to Rhizome-9. Treatment pods, an ADAM, X-ray and MRI machines, all spare machinery, spare parts for shelters, for hospitals, for the project. But the most valuable items in Akane’s collection are those which she now thanks herself for having the foresight to retrieve years ago.

Akane pulls the cowl neck of her sweater over her mouth as she clears her way towards the deeper reaches of the warehouse, each boot step and shuffle of boxes sending new plumes of ancient dust into the air. The specks catch the rays of her flashlight as the automatic lights lag behind her, sluggish from disuse. She finds what she’s looking for, undisturbed and itself covered with a thin layer of that same dust, and runs her fingers down its side, leaving tracks like tires in snow— then stares at the bulk of the quantum computer, its core an eye bearing into her soul.

She’s never been much of a mechanic. To set up the computer, to drag over and interface the monitor from the other equipment she’d scavenged from that shelter, takes her the better part of a nearly sleepless week. The clock continues to tick down impassively, and while the mounting pressure helps Akane concentrate, she finds herself wishing for her brother’s hands, his eye for structure complementing her ideas, her knowledge of theory. It’s not difficult by herself, working as the heavy creaks of a windstorm sound outside, but it’s not intuitive; Akane connects wires on a whim, undoes them, checks through piles of boxes for cables she might not even have, guessing at inputs and technologies she hasn’t yet learned. (The server and monitor speak two different languages, both in their ports and in their code, the quantum computer acting as a mediator, as grueling as it still is to operate.) But she’d hardly expected to be doing this herself in the first place—the computer had been nearly ready to be shipped to Rhizome-9 for Sigma’s use, to create Lagomorph, Luna. (If it were her initiative, she thinks to herself, if she had _time,_ she’d gut this entirely, give it a built in monitor and input of its own.)

And finally, hands covered in dust and grime, Akane spares only a moment to look up at her handiwork— as many generators as she could manage Frankensteined to the quantum computer Frankensteined to the transporters’ monitor, ethernet cables running to and from the router of a server she’d picked up from a specific long-abandoned building in Nebraska. With expectations as low as, unfortunately, her caffeine supply, Akane flips the breaker switch with a distinct creak— and before her eyes, the system boots up, the core of the quantum computer casting this distant corner of the warehouse in a faint glow.

Her heartbeat remains steady, not one for premature celebration. It’ll be a miracle if this works, and Akane doesn’t use the word miracle lightly. But if it worked in September 2030, it could work _now,_ and if it works _now,_ Akane can break down access to alternate dimensions to a matter of steps. A science. A new mechanism to harness, to utilize, to save humanity.

(This is a lot of faith to put in a man who’d sooner let the world end than lose his friendships, but maybe that’s exactly _why_ Akane is inclined to trust Carlos’s word.)

Despite the fact that the server is alone, isolated, despite the fact that the internet as humanity knew it fell to pieces three years ago, the quantum computer connects. And despite the fact that the monitor’s processors are meant to decrypt completely alien input data, it lights up, its pale blues illuminating Akane’s face in the lone weak light far above her head.

She’d only seen this interface once, briefly, before disappearing into those pods, into beams of light, her essence reassembled in another timeline. Without the transporters attached, rendered useless without the necessary passwords, without the immense power required to charge them, it has nowhere to send commands to; but now instead of timelines like rivers the screen shows clusters, rhizomes, root connecting and interlacing across time, space, dimensions on axes she hadn’t even conceived of, that her models had never accounted for— and it’s _now_ that her heart alights with a spark, with _excitement_ through the haze of grey, and perhaps there’s something to be said about no longer heading towards a future where you’re destined to die.

For every infinity there is a greater infinity, but when you bend the very axioms by which you define reality, you can find a three wherever you damn please.

The correspondence to instruct Akane’s staff to contact Sigma, to board Diana on an early supply shuttle back to a hospital shelter on Earth is brief. Akane doesn’t know if Sigma will know her original intentions, and if so, whether he will forgive her— but there wasn’t a choice before and there isn’t a choice now; there are just 240,000 miles between Diana and her salvation, two dead transporter pods between Akane and a multiverse of possibility, and years’ worth of work from scratch between humanity and a brighter future.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope it was fun to read even if no one knows what's going on. If you want any additional context let me know. :)


End file.
